Joey and even the always-cross Meneer Wilfie all doted on Bronnie. They all had a new toy to play with and I had lots of visitors.
‘What the hell!’ Ivan was said to have exclaimed just after my birth. ‘She has a bladdie crown of thorns on her head. Look how it stands up. And look at the button nose. Have you ever seen anything like it?’
It was to be my first inkling about how important appearance and looks were to the community I had been born into. Coloureds were weird that way: they’d roll an imaginary dice and take bets on what a pregnancy would deliver. Would it come out dark to the fair, or fair and blue-eyed to the dark? Everybody maliciously waited for dark children to be visited on fair relatives, especially those who had opted to be reclassified white.
And then the offspring all go through a lifetime of the vicious game of trek die siel uit? which entailed drawing out the child’s ‘spirit’ to ascertain temperament. They would tease and mock and provoke, a disruptive and unnecessary thing to do. After which the poor kid would be boxed in by the often-repeated line of ‘you take after so and so’.
Labelling is very limiting, and it was unpleasant to be subjected to trek die siel uit? by grownups in the extended family. It was a nuisance, especially when you had better things to do, like playing outside, colouring-in and drawing.
My own family did not taunt and tease as much as outsiders, probably because they were too busy with all kinds of chores. My older cousins popped out fair, dark, in-between, dark, blonde and blue-eyed (times two), medium, medium, medium, fair, blond and blue-eyed, and so it would alternate until there was me and four more after me who were all similarly varied. The blond and blue-eyed cousins were unpretentious coloureds who lived in Bridgetown.
My looks attracted much comment, some quite nasty, mostly from females in great-grandma Sophie’s family. They thought I may have Down syndrome or cerebral palsy. I was always sickly. On top of which I didn’t resemble anyone in either my mother or my father’s families.
Seeing that they had so much to say, they might have urged Mavie to ask Dr Cliffie Louw to check me out for autism. It might have satisfied their need to label me. We certainly travelled the distance to Athlone often enough for a snotty nose, tonsillitis and all other childhood diseases. I stoically endured the stick stuck on the tongue and the ‘Say ahh’ or the occasional injection of antibiotics. My consolation was to admire the front garden at the surgery with its fountain and fishpond. When Dr Louw emigrated to Canada, we went to Drs Sakinofsky and Osrin’s surgery where Dor worked. And still no further tests for whatever was ‘wrong’ with me.
Make no mistake, appearances always came first in the community I grew up in. People contradicted themselves when they quoted the English proverb, ‘Do not judge a book by its cover’. I suppose this applied only to some and not others.
Ivan’s suspicions about my oddity were confirmed when I grew into toddlerhood and started talking. I acquired an imaginary friend named Dali. I received dark looks of censure and he’d snap at me to stop.
I had only two years with Grandma Florie before her life of broken-heartedness consumed her. She died at Groote Schuur Hospital while in a diabetic coma. I wanted her back. I devised all kinds of plans to get her back out of that place in the sky I’d been told she’d gone to. These included the use of the very tall extension ladder which had to be placed on Grandpa Jack’s crock VW Kombi.
Grandma Florie and me with my crown of thorns, 1961.
The day she died in April 1963, her departing spirit endured its final humiliation at the hands of Grandpa Jack and Miss Lizzie. The mistress had never met Grandma Florie, who had decided never to play into their hands by acting out the role of the confrontational scorned wife. Mavie and Stella heard from a reliable source that on the day Grandpa Jack told Miss Lizzie that his wife had died, the two of them laughed until the tears rolled down their faces, and streaks ran down Miss Lizzie’s carefully powdered and rouged face.
About six months after Grandma Florie’s death Ivan, who was a badge designer at Mr Barlow’s embroidery factory in Steenberg, quit his job. He signed up for a six-month season working on the Dutch whaling vessel, the Willem Barends. At the age of 32, he worked as a deckhand, aiding in the hunting and killing of whales in the South Atlantic. The meat was destined for the European and Asian markets.
Ivan must have hated being at sea because he never went back when the season ended but resumed his job at Barlow’s. His stories were filled with the horrors of the Roaring Forties (the strong westerly winds of the Southern Hemisphere between latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees), fear of imminent death, of vomit overboard, horrible shipmates who had murderous intent to push him overboard, their foul language, and the gore and blood everywhere on deck, which was his responsibility to clean up.
Grandpa Jack was still living in two places: at Miss Lizzie’s all day, sleeping at Heatherley Road at night. After 33 years of defiant togetherness, he and Miss Lizzie only married in the mid-1960s, about three years after Grandma Florie’s death, at St Paul’s. Finally, he moved to her rented house in Belgravia Estate in Athlone.
Uncle Kenny, not long before he died, 1996
Miss Lizzie’s family had lived in Black River, but it was declared a white area and they’d been forced to leave their home in the 1950s and move to the Cape Flats.
Dor and me in the lounge, 1963.
Dor, Stella and Mavie only met Miss Lizzie, who had been a dark shadow in their lives for so long, the day Kenny married Olive from Simonstown. The wedding tea was held at the house in Heatherley Road. Dor and Stella were polite, but Mavie – who’d been cruelly rejected by her father to pacify his mistress – refused to be diplomatic and ignored her.
By 1966, only five people lived in great-grandpa Joe’s house: my mother Mavie, her husband Ivan, and me, and Mavie’s two older sisters Dor and Stella. But there was always an assortment of visitors in for short stays. The four grownups contributed to a pool which covered upkeep of the property, rates, electricity, water and food.
Each one saved the rest of their meagre wages and used it to buy what was perceived as uplifting things. They surely needed it as a way to help them deal with apartheid. By now, its laws had become the bane of their existence.
Ivan, Mavie and me at my first birthday party, 1962.
Mavie and me in mourning for Grandma Florie, standing in the straggly vegetable patch, 1963.
My first birthday party, friend Jean Engelbrecht, Grandma Florie, Mavie and me, Dor, friend Mrs Maggie Smith, Stella. Standing: Ivan, cousins Flo-Anne and Gregory, and Mr Peter Smith, 1962.
At cousin Esme’s home, where Cavendish Square is today, for her daughter Denise’s first birthday party, 1963.
